Swine Flu

Apparently the obese are most risk of dying during the ongoing flu epidemic/pandemic whatever we are calling it now and there has been an increase in the number of coffins being built. Are we building big coffins for obese victims of swine flu? See today's Sunday Post. So far we have not had another update of Swine Flu guidelines for over a week, at one stage we were getting new ones every day. In my department we have pretty good procedures in place to segregate suspected swine flu victims from everyone else, except for one (in my opinion) major flaw. When we have a suspected case whichever nurse is available deals with the patient using the proper protective gear and stays with the patient throughout, all very sensible except for one thing - I could be that nurse, no complaints but when did my history of heart disease stop being a "serious underlying illness"? Every patient who has died so far has had a history of "serious underlying illness".

This is so typical of nursing, we had a large patient last week who needed mobilised, who did it? The pregnant nurse and the nurse with the heart disease - so I will just have to get on with looking after what ever comes my way regardless.